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Here are the Century magazine articles that got read the most online this year.

I’m a regular reader of Runner's World. Like most special-interest magazines, there’s a lot of repetition of ideas if you read long enough, but it’s excellent monthly motivation and entertainment for this unexpected hobby and lifestyle of mine. At times the magazine is downright inspirational.

Other states have a history of violence, suspicion of government, and more Baptists than people. What makes Texas different? Robert Wuthnow says it’s oil.

Each day in the U.S., nine churches close their doors for good. This isn’t news—but it’s hard to talk about when it’s your church.

Here are Carol Howard Merritt's most-read posts of the year.

Full-time employment, as we well know now in our duct-tape kludged economy, ain't an easy thing to come by. It's particularly, brutishly so for 20 and 30-somethings, who often cobble together their lives with part-time employment here and there. Which is why an article in The Washington Post struck me.

Here are this year's most popular bloggers and posts from the CCblogs network.

I know of a congregation that, for many years, provided a “living nativity pageant” in its community. The church is in the center of town and has an expansive front lawn. On a certain December Sunday afternoon each year, it would fill that lawn with live sheep and goats and donkeys, costumed shepherds and wise men, a gaggle of angels, an innkeeper, a manger, and, of course, the holy family.

In Ian Leslie’s telling, curiosity is far from a valued quality. Augustine, he notes, equated curiosity with temptation.

I sat down with a friend, and he told me about his holiday....

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Will Campbell once held a funeral for a town. This odd act showed how the practices of death and dying aren’t just for individuals.

Here are this year's most-read posts from Then & Now, a weekly blog edited by Edward J. Blum and Kate Bowler and presented in partnership with the Kripke Center of Creighton University.

In the past few weeks, we have faced brutal horrors, made even worse because they are the torments carried out by our own hands. The torture report was released, amidst fears and warnings that there would be international uprisings and retaliations. Republicans have accused Democrats of seizing a political moment, to make the Bush administration look bad to the detriment of national security. The talking points seem to echo through the red party, aside from John McCain, who has been a victim of torture himself and has a first-hand knowledge of the evil.

Here are Drew Hart's most-read posts of the year.

I held a five-month-old Iraqi child in my lap for almost a half hour last week. Any long-distance grandma knows how we ache to hold our own grandchildren, and leap at any opportunity to snuggle another woman’s child or grandchild. The clothes closet our church runs was busier than ever, since it was the last time we’d be open before Christmas.

For Ben Quash, scripture and tradition are givens. Our task is to discover and reinterpret what we have been given.

The Magi's alien exoticism is an intrinsic part of Matthew's story.

We had not one but two baptisms the other day. What absorbed me most was the way the little kids edged toward the event like wasps to a picnic.